The potential and limitations of decentralized social protocols Nostr and Farcaster

22-12-28 09:00

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原文标题：《一文对比去中心化社交协议 Nostr 和 Farcaster 》

Original article by pourteaux

The DeFi way

I have long been critical of the idea that Twitter is a "town square," where moderate governance is called "censorship" and users are entitled to membership of the platform and to be a controlled audience. Supporters of this position view Twitter almost as a utility and argue that restricting the platform's activities is, in effect, an unconstitutional restriction on speech. Surprisingly, this is the modern "new wave" libertarian argument, whose proponents claim that Twitter has a monopoly due to its insurmountable network effects and therefore does not merit the typical protections afforded to private companies.

Private companies have never been town squares, but agreements may be.

I'm with the old-line liberals: Twitter is a private company that sets its own terms of service, and the government shouldn't be making operational decisions on Twitter's behalf. No one should have access to the services of a private company, and there are unlimited venues for free speech without making demands on the audience of a particular platform. Obviously, platforming hate speech is bad for Twitter's business because they will lose advertisers. It's ridiculous to think that you can't compete with Twitter, which has many Social network competitors like Facebook and TikTok, as well as direct competitors like Gab, Mastodon, Truth Social, etc.

New Wave liberals argue that those banned from Twitter "can't just start their own Social networks," but that's actually what the former president did to Truth Social after he was banned on Jan. 6. Moreover, many of those who claim "censorship" actually have huge platforms and often use the "censorship" narrative as a populist means of growth.

As a private company, Twitter not only has the right to censor speech as they see fit, but a well-curated platform can make Twitter a better user experience and a more profitable business. Almost no one wants anything from 4chan on their Twitter timeline.

Musk did us all a favor when he took over Twitter, quickly proving it to the right: The man who promised to "run Twitter" restricted speech as much, if not more, than Twitter's previous leadership. He did it more impulsively, with fewer procedures, and out of a right-of-center bias, but the point is that he did it. Twitter without moderators has always been untenable, a private company can't create a truly unobstructed speech platform, and when they try, the platform becomes a cesspool that almost everyone ignores and has no business model, just like 4chan.

In that case, you may be wondering -- why would I advocate an open, permissionless and censor-resistant social network?

The new social layer allows us to cater to those who want a completely open "town square" and those who prioritize a carefully managed and curated experience. The two views seem opposite, but in fact they coincide perfectly. In fact, I don't think there's any divide between the groups that these two statements represent, they just notice different parts of the dysfunction of modern social networks. Over the past few years, private companies have tried and failed to become champions of free speech and places with rules of common decency.

You can't have it both ways. Governments, advertisers, employees and public pressure will force private companies to restrict speech. And any regulatory action could be abused in the future and could disenfranchise many people.

Private companies cannot be public squares, but agreements can.

A protocol such as Nostr or Farcaster can be permissionless and censor-resistant because no one can send a deletion request to it in a distributed network. Of course, this is an incomplete solution, because if you stop there, then all you have is a distributed 4chan, which is of little interest to anyone. You need a second layer of private companies and clients to act as curators and moderators. Users can opt in and pay for this management to provide a better experience. Depending on your worldview, you can pay for curation from the New York Times or Level 2 of the Joe Rogan Experience.

Twitter itself may be a curator of content from Nostr or Farcaster (or both) and offer you ads alongside the content to make the platform free. There may be some overlap in the audit decisions of all these different L2 operators, but there will also be many non-overlapping audit decisions. Therefore, no one is at risk of being "de-platforming" unless you accomplish impossible tasks that are prohibited by all the different L2 managers at the same time. Even so, for those who can stand it, such a person's posts are still available on unmoderated L1.

Thus, the "Social layer" addresses the needs of both sides of the political spectrum: a social platform that doesn't have to worry about "censorship" and "de-platformization," while still allowing users to opt in to a curated experience with moderators they trust!

The social layer allows all the benefits of the permissionless and censor-resistant L1, as well as the optional curated experience in L2.

Let's delve into two of L1's attempts: Nostr and Farcaster. I'm happy to use both and will provide my non-technical experience with both and what I see as their potential and limitations. I would also like to thank fiatjaf [who founded Nostr] for helping me understand nostr, and Dan Romero [Farcaster's founder] for inviting me to join Farcaster. I would also like to thank Maciek Laskus for his thorough analysis of each issue and for speaking with me on the subject. Let's start with a table:

Both Farcaster and Nostr aim to decentralize communication, but make different trade-offs along the way.

Both Nostr and Farcaster use Repeaters (called "hubs" in Farcaster) to store social data, such as posts, and transmit it to users (who run software called "clients"). Farcaster uses the Ethereum architecture (for example, accounts use Ethereum key pairs), while Nostr doesn't use blockchain (although you see a lot of lightning network transactions, it can theoretically support any blockchain).

It's worth noting that Farcaster is a VC-backed company with a well-known team and a great product, while Nostr is not a company at all, it was set up by an anonymous person with no funding (although it later received 14 BTC funding from Jack Dorsey), And it's clearly at an earlier stage of development. In speaking with fiatjaf, I confirmed that Nostr's only funding was this bitcoin grant from Jack, and fiatjaf subsequently parted ways with jb55, which was developing Damus clients for iOS and macOS.

Both Farcaster and Nostr have already built clients and services on top of it (examples: Nostr, Farcaster), although Farcaster seems to be further along in the process. In fact, some of the design choices Farcaster makes make development easier, while Nostr's simplicity is a trade-off between difficult development in the near term and more potential use cases in the future.

For example, Farcaster currently requires full synchronization of all hubs in the network, making it easier to develop clients. In contrast, Nostr allows Repeaters to host or delete anything, making client-side development more difficult in the short term, but allowing for many potential business models for these Repeaters as well as more open-ended potential use cases. Repeaters on Nostr can then charge subscription fees or place ads or otherwise select content to include and exclude.

Farcaster has a slick product ready for the average user, an app that works just as well, if not better, than Twitter.

Nostr's current user base is mostly Bitcoin users, while Farcaster's is mostly Ethereum users and tech entrepreneurs. In many ways, this is also reflected in the design choices made on each platform. Like Bitcoin, Nostr prioritises simplicity, neutrality, and the convenience of running your own repeater, such as the nodes in Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin, Nostr eschews venture capital and has companies or well-known founders. Running a hub with Farcaster is more difficult and expensive, but Farcaster asserts that some design trade-offs still allow for "sufficient decentralization," while prioritizing more recent use cases and optimizing products that are almost ready for retail users.

I have an account on both platforms (@pourteaux.com on Nostr, @px on Farcaster). Simply put, Nostr seems to follow the spirit of cypherpunk and Bitcoin, where simplicity and robust protocols are Paramount. I was impressed by fiatjaf, jb55, and other contributors. Farcaster follows a more traditional model of a tech startup whose products have been honed and are now pleasing to look at. Both efforts are aimed at creating a native social layer for the Internet: I see this as a moral obligation. So much social dysfunction is the result of our current corporate society trying to be all things to all people. The layered approach to social media combines the cypherpunk principles of L1 with the institutional importance of L2 to serve a social experience that meets everyone's needs.